1. Field of the Invention
The present invention generally relates to data analysis, and more particularly, the present invention relates to intelligent analysis of one or more traces received from a protocol analyzer in communication with data transfer or storage network.
2. Description of the Related Art
Networks represent shared access arrangements in which several network devices, such as computers or workstations (collectively termed “stations”), are interconnected by a common communications medium that allows the users of the stations to share computing resources, such as file servers, printers, and storage, as well as application software and user work product. The communication medium between the stations may be wired, such as coaxial, twisted pair, or fiber optic cable, or a wireless communications medium, such as cellular or radio frequency (RF) transmission systems. The respective networks may range from bridged segments of local area networks (LANs) located in a department or single floor of a building, to a wide area networks (WAN) wherein a plurality of LANs are geographically distributed and interconnected through switching devices, such as routers or bridges. Alternately, the networks may represent Storage Area Networks (SAN) or Network Attached Storage (NAS) configuration deployed in LAN, WAN or more or less private interconnections using specialized high-speed protocols, such as Fibre Channel (FC) or Serial Attached SCSI (SAS).
Depending on performance requirements, the different LANs within a WAN may have different physical connection configurations (or “topologies”), such as Ethernet or Token Ring. They may also have different vendor proprietary LAN hardware and software with different signal protocols that govern the exchange of information between the stations in the LAN. When these different topology and different protocol LANs are interconnected, which is referred to as “internetworking”, there must be an exchange of signal protocols. The open Standards Interconnect (OSI) seven layer interconnect model developed by the International Organization for Standardization describes how information is exchanged between software applications on workstations in different networks by passing the information through a hierarchy of protocol layers.
As a result, networks present a complicated arrangement of devices in various topologies capable of supporting different protocols. To ensure performance, networks must be managed. Management includes monitoring signal traffic for trends related to signal volume, routing, and transmission speed to pro-actively plan for network growth and to avoid signal congestion and network downtime. This also includes detecting and diagnosing network operational problems which affect performance to both prevent problems and to restore network operation with minimum downtime following the detection of a problem. These are the responsibilities of a network administrator, whose network duties require both anticipation of performance changes and diagnosis of performance failures. This requires the availability of network statistics related to performance, and network administrators commonly collect an archive of network management statistics that indicate network utilization, growth and reliability, to facilitate near-term problem isolation and longer-term network planning.
In general, categories of statistics to be monitored include those related to utilization, performance, availability, and stability within a monitoring period. Utilization statistics relate to network traffic-versus-capacity (i.e. efficiency) and the statistics include frame count, frames-per-second (FPS), the frequency of occurrence of certain protocols, and certain application level statistics. Performance statistics relate to quality of service issues, such as traffic delays, the number of packet collisions, and the number of message packets dropped. Availability statistics gauge the accessibility of different OSI protocol layers within the network, and include line availability as percentage of uptime, root availability, and application availability. Stability statistics describe short-term fluctuation in the network which degrade service, including: number of fast line status transitions, number of fast root changes (root flapping, next hop count stability, and short term ICM behavior).
The data to produce the foregoing statistics is collected by instruments known as protocol analyzers. In particular, protocol analyzers are used as diagnostic and testing tools at various stages of the development, integration and maintenance of electronic computing devices. Typically, a protocol analyzer is designed for use with a particular electrical communication interface protocol, such as ATA, SCSI, Ethernet, or Fibre Channel (FC). In a typical use, the protocol analyzer is connected to the communication interface of the computing system being tested to record communication activity on the interface. The communication activity is captured and recorded in a dedicated trace buffer associated with the protocol analyzer, and then analyzed or presented to the user for the purpose of diagnosing, testing or maintaining the communication interface in a trace viewer format. In a given environment, one or more analyzers may be placed in selected locations, according to the devices of interest. One known analyzer is the GTX Analyzer commercially from Finisar Corporation of Sunnyvale, Calif.
One limitation with many existing protocol analyzers is that such analyzers do not actually “analyze” the data captured by the analyzer. Rather, the data captured by analyzers is presented to the user (a human being) for inspection and determination of whatever faults, errors, or other unwanted conditions exist in the network. Since a trace file may easily contain several million entries, manual or brute force analysis of these traces is extremely time consuming. Trace viewers often allow the administrator to search through the trace for specific commands or lists of associated commands, however, the trace viewers do not assist the user with any analysis other than to find particular types of commands that the user searches for. As such, even when accurate performance statistics are provided by analyzers, the ability to diagnose network failures quickly, or at all, relies on the education and practical experience of the network administrator in general, and their experience with the particular network being analyzed. Unfortunately, the continued rapid growth in network installations and expansions often requires that less experienced personnel be made responsible for administration, and as such, the analysis process is further complicated and degraded in quality.
Another limitation with conventional tools that perform a very limited degree of real intelligent analysis (as opposed to merely capturing data) do not support numerous data transmission technologies (including several emerging and popular technologies) such as FC. FC is a general name for an integrated set of standards being developed by ANSI (American National Standards Institute) whose purpose is to act as a universal high-speed interface for computers and mass storage. It is designed to combine the best features of channels and networks, namely the simplicity and speed of channel communications and the flexibility and interconnectivity of protocol-based network communications. FC is a highly-reliable, gigabit interconnect technology that allows concurrent communications among workstations, mainframes, servers, data storage systems, and other peripherals using well-know protocols, such as Systems Interface (SCSI), Internet protocol (IP), FICON and VI protocols. FC provides interconnect systems for multiple topologies (e.g., point-to-point, switched, and arbitrated loop (FC-AL)) that can scale to a total system bandwidth on the order of terabits per second. One area in which FC has been implemented with significant success is in storage environments such as Storage Area Networks (SANs) and Network Attached Storage (NAS). However, system performance limitations may be introduced as a result of inefficient system configuration, e.g., where a legacy device on a network bus determines the overall bus speed. In such situations, intelligent analysis of the network is clearly beneficial to facilitate optimization of its configuration and/or diagnosis of faults.
Therefore, there exists a need for an intelligent analysis tool capable of efficiently and accurately analyzing various networks.